


Let Sleeping Assassins Stay Sleeping

by agentromanoff06



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Crackfic adjacent, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Napping, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha and Tony are the most chaotic bickery siblings ever, Natasha has super serum enhancements thank you for coming to my TED talk, Protective Tony Stark, Sometimes Clint Barton has rights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23568028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentromanoff06/pseuds/agentromanoff06
Summary: The one where the Red Room serum-enhanced ex-Russian assassin spy needs to crash on the couch of her genius billionaire ex-playboy philanthropist colleague/friend/annoying-brother-figure.
Relationships: Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	Let Sleeping Assassins Stay Sleeping

“Oh,” Tony blinked at the unexpected assassin-shaped-lump curled up on his living room couch. That unmistakable red hair looked like it had seen better days but still effectively veiled Natasha’s face from any surveyors. It had definitely grown out since the last time Tony had seen her, and must have been at least shoulder-length by now. 

A terrible, terrible thought occurred to Tony at that moment and before he could fully regain control of his limbs, he was tip-toeing over to the couch to check the rise and fall of her chest. Up. Down. Up, down. Up...down…

Convinced she was breathing and not dead on his couch, Tony sighed and looked back to the kitchen.

So, Natasha was sleeping on his couch, but was Tony about to let that stop him from making pancakes and catching up on his rewatch binge of Star Trek: Voyager at this tender hour of two in the morning?

Absolutely not. 

\-- 

An hour later, Tony was kicking his feet up onto the coffee table, plate full of pancakes on his lap, earbuds securely fastened, and the brightness on his TV dimmed. Before he could hit play, his ears picked up the faintest sound of a tiny lawn mower coming from Natasha’s general direction. Curiosity fully peaked, Tony set down his plate and leaned forward, taking his earbuds out to get a better listen. 

Haha, yup. Wow. Oh yeah. Thank you, God. Tony thought all this to himself as he took out his phone and immediately pulled up the camera. Natasha’s snores were possibly the most beautiful thing he’d heard in a while, beautiful because of all the different and creative ways he was planning to use this recording as future blackmail and personal enjoyment. 

He created an encrypted folder on his phone entitled Super Spy Blackmail Dirt and saved the video to it. 

Tony couldn’t help the giggle that escaped him as he pocketed his phone.

\--

Around forty-five minutes into his bingeing of Star Trek, Natasha’s tiny lawn mower snores turned into a full blown lawn mower. A chorus of lawnmowers. Tony, after recording several more minutes of that, thoughtfully decided he should get her a blanket or something. 

When he came back from his bedroom with a couple of thick blankets, he draped two of them over her carefully until she was fully covered. He tucked in the blankets around her feet and shoulders, and as he did this, Natasha mumbled something in Russian and twitched a little bit in her sleep.

“Shh,” Tony pulled his hands away quickly and stood there frozen. He was not totally not eager to see what a sleeping assassin startled awake would look like for him. That just wasn’t in the cards today, thank you. Backing away carefully, Tony returned to his seat and his pancakes and resolved to let sleeping assassins lie.

\--

“Hey, Clint buddy, got a minute?”

“Depends. Kinda busy.” Tony could hear the faint sounds of a fistfight in the background.

“It’s about Nat.”

“Shoot.”

“She’s fine. Uhh, I just wanted to ask. Has she ever like, slept over at your place? But like...not woken up for a while?” 

“Sure. How long has she been out? She there now?”

Tony glanced over to the couch from the kitchen. “Yeah, uh, about half the day. She got here at two in the morning, somehow, I think, and it’s...almost four in the afternoon.” He confirmed when he checked the time on his phone. Damn.

“Huh. She hasn’t been out like that in a while. Last time she slept that long was after Budapest,” there was another loud grunt and cracking sound from over the line and Tony winced. “She’ll be okay,” Clint assured. “Make sure she drinks a lot of water when she wakes up.”

“She’s definitely still breathing, I have JARVIS monitoring her vitals as much as he can without actually hooking her up to anything,” Tony started to ramble a bit, but Clint eased his mind by cutting him off.

“Yeah, bad idea. Steer clear until she wakes up. Definitely don’t touch her or try to wake her up. She’s kind of a punch-first, ask questions later type of agent.”

“Any particular reason why she’s been sleeping this long? I mean, even when I’m exhausted and need a good crash, the most I can get is nine, maybe ten hours.” 

“Uh, that’s not really my area to discuss.”

“O-kay,” Tony raised his eyebrows. “Huh, that wasn’t mysterious at all.”

“Leave it, talk to her about it if you’re really curious.”

Tony didn’t say anything as he processed possible reasons.

“Tony? I gotta go.”

“Alright, thanks buddy.”

“Yup. Tony?”

“Yes, Legolas?” 

“Is she snoring?” Clint snickered over the phone.

“Like a lawn mower. Like an opera chorus of lawnmowers. I’ll send you video, it’s glorious.”

“God bless.”

Tony hung up.

“Hi, Tony.” Sound directly behind him nearly caused him to chuck his phone across the room.

“Jesus, Nat!” Tony whirled around to face one very alive, very not sleeping ex-Russian assassin. 

“Excuse me,” Natasha reached around him to get a glass from the counter and began to pour herself some water from the sink.

“You know, I’m not even going to ask you how you broke in without alerting any of my security systems, but then again I enjoy living in peace so maybe I won’t do that,” Tony finally said after reclaiming a normal heart rate.

“Pepper let me in, genius. I told her not to tell you in case you were sleeping.”

“Hm,” Tony pursed his lips and tracked her closely as she walked back to the couch. Red hair a frizzled mess, leather jacket that was definitely not comfortable to sleep in, was that a gun in the back of her jeans? “Are you okay?”

“Never better.” She was so good at lying, it scared him a little. Scratch that, a lot. This woman could, probably has, definitely could take down governments with her ability to lie. “Also, asking Pepper was just because I felt like being nice. I could totally break in here without anyone knowing if I wanted to, you know that, right?”

“You know you snore, a little bit, when you sleep? You’re so adorable.” 

Tony ducked the pillow that whooshed abruptly in his direction. 

“I do not,” Natasha scowled, even though he could see that she was absolutely fighting back a smile. There were several little wrinkles on the left side of her face from being scrunched up on the couch for so long. 

“Ha,” Tony sat next to her. “Can I ask who or what hit you so hard that you felt like you needed to crash on my couch for,” he glanced at his watch, “Fifteen hours. Shit.” He frowned. 

“Um,” Natasha took a sip of the water, “Yeah, uh…” her eyes followed a slow trail up the wall, “A mission I had in Bucharest went south. The guy I was trailing, he had some contacts we didn’t know about, some informants, and…” she grimaced as if embarrassed, “well, I didn’t connect the dots until it was too late.” 

“But you took care of it, obviously.”

“Yeah,” she took another sip and smiled, but it looked like more of a grimace again. 

“What time is it, anyway?” she asked, glancing back at Tony.

“Three fifty-seven in the afternoon, Natasha,” JARVIS’ dulcet voice answered gently. “Also, I thought you might like to know that you have been bleeding onto the couch for the last fifteen minutes.”

“Shit,” Natasha put the water down and began peeling her jacket off at the same time Tony immediately stood to grab the first-aid kit under the sink. 

“How did you just start bleeding?” He asked her, moving quickly back to the couch and opening up the kit. 

“I must’ve torn some stitches while I was sleeping, if I moved around. That’s what I get for trying to patch myself up on a plane,” she finally got the jacket off and, yup, a patch of blood roughly the size of a dinner plate was soaking through her black tank top. She cursed something in Russian and carefully pulled up her top. “If I take this off, promise not to say anything about my tattoos?”

The mixture of rabid concern and gleeful delight on Tony’s face probably added a good five years to her lifespan and subtracted three from his, “Depends on the tattoo. What, do you have one that says ‘I love mom’?”

“Nice. Joke’s on you, don’t have any,” she sucked in a breath and bit down on her tongue before raising her arms to take the shirt off. “Shit, shit, that’s another stitch.” She discarded the bloody tank top in a small baggy from the first-aid kit, looking considerably more pale.

Tony narrowed his eyes as he peered at her abdomen and back, “You didn’t just pull stitches, Nat.” Bruises littered her body, the darkest ones surrounding the feathered stitches that trailed up her side along her ribcage. She sat on a plane like this for hours? Why didn’t SHIELD send her a quinjet? Unless maybe part of the mission had to take place on a plane...Tony let his thoughts ramble for a bit as he busied his hands around the first-aid kit.

He handed her some gauze and opened up a packet of sterilized cotton pads, “You look like an apple that got mistaken for a tennis ball.” 

“Yeah, well, it feels worse than it looks,” she glared at him as she started cleaning the blood off. “Sorry about your couch.”

“Eh, didn’t like it anyway,” he dabbed some of the cotton pad on her biggest broken stitch. Natasha jerked but thankfully didn’t hit him. “Sorry. I’ll get you some ice in a second, too.” 

“Do you have any vodka?”

“Wow. Are you Russian or something?” He blinked at her. “Yeah, I’ll get you some after I fix this. These stitches suck. Have you never stitched yourself up before?”

“I was looking through a mirror on a plane with a lot of turbulence and probably, like, three broken ribs, Tony.”

“O-kay,” Tony looked at her, “Gonna pretend you didn’t just say you had three broken ribs and we’ll deal with that later. Actually. JARVIS, can you get a doctor up here?” He didn’t really know how to do stitches or treat broken ribs. But the least he could do was help clean her up and give her some ice and alcohol.

“Right away, sir.” 

“I hate you,” Natasha sulked and hissed in a sharp breath when Tony brushed up against a very definitely broken rib. “Ow.” And in the moment, it really hit him how human she was compared to Thor, or Steve, or even Bruce. At least he had his suit. Her own mortality was something she had to take into consideration every time she went out on a mission.

“Sorry,” he looked genuinely apologetic, and had a sudden overwhelming urge to dote on her. “Vodka, on the way. Do you want some in a glass or should I just bring over a whole bottle?” 

“Yes.”

“Ha. Funny. Why were you asleep for fifteen hours?”

He figured a point blank question was his best shot at getting a semi-truthful answer out of her. He was actually surprised at the startled look on her face, and how it took several moments for her to actually respond.

“I don’t think you’re ready for that.”

“Try me.”

“Tony.” She actually looked pleading.

“Fine. But you’ll tell me one day, right?” 

Natasha bit her lip and closed her eyes, “One day. On one condition.”

“Anything, whatcha need?”

“You delete every single clip of me snoring from your phone, in front of me, right now.”

“You know, I’ve always enjoyed your aura of mystery and plethora of secrets. Maybe I’ll just let this one go.”

Natasha smiled. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

“Come on, this is the only dirt I’ve been able to get on you since your Natalie Rushman days. Give me this one thing. I promise, I won’t even share it,” he waited a beat. “Publicly.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, “Yeah, I hate you again.”

The elevator dinged signaling that the doctor had arrived, and Tony was just thankful that he wasn’t also in need of urgent medical attention at that moment.

**Author's Note:**

> Believe it or not, my last quarantine nap was the source of inspiration for this little thing! Since life is now on an indefinite pause (yay apocalypse!), I have so much more free time now to actually devote to writing. I haven’t written anything substantial in, yikes, years, so I’m sorry if this was a dumpster fire one-shot. I’ve always loved me a good Tony/Nat sibling dynamic fic, shame on the MCU for not giving us more. Oh well. Hope it was fun! Let me know what you think in the comments, friends.


End file.
